Work in progress, Diamond jeweler commercial

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:03 am

This is a project I'm currently working on, so none of this is finished. In fact not much animation is done at all. I've been working on getting backgrounds done. I was just hoping to get some feedback.

This is based on some clip art that the store has been using in print ads. They wanted to animate it and tell a story. A guy asks a girl out on a date, they go to a movie, later on he shops for a ring, then proposes in a park. It's challenging because they are always in silhouette, but that makes it easier in some respects.

Texting a message on smart phone
http://youtu.be/OfSUxlyphcY

Shopping for diamonds
http://youtu.be/fEt_5gqo38o

Animated background for movie theater
http://youtu.be/fEt_5gqo38o

neeters_guy · Post by **neeters_guy** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 5:58 pm

Looks good so far, nothing to crit really. Even though the silhouettes are realistic, you'll still need to sell the acting and avoid stiffness and floatiness. Good luck on this.

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 9:58 pm

Here's the latest scene, a guy proposing in the park. Hopefully it plays smoothly enough to see it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQOiubWtC38

Getting these characters rigged was a pain, and they're still not right. There's an issue with the guy when he kneels down, popping into the last keyframe for some reason. I used bone locking on the feet, and moved the pelvis bone down to put him that position.

Also, the girl's arms aren't right yet. They both need to have their mouths animated better.

If there's any hints you can give me I'd appreciate it. I've been going back over tutorials trying to find solutions.

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Thu Mar 29, 2012 3:48 am

Here is my latest work on this scene
http://youtu.be/3C6kgugtLig

I worked on this for a very long time. I wanted the background to look like a moving impressionist watercolor with vibrant Spring colors.

I made this earlier in the week, and then I used parts of it in the above background.
http://youtu.be/1SSnhRUGzfE

kaboom · Post by **kaboom** » Thu Mar 29, 2012 4:06 am

This looks great and I can tell you worked a lot on it.

My critique is that the mouth movements don't look real. It looks like they are saying "ya ya ya ya ya". Could you slow down the mouth movements? It may look more real that way. Or do you even need the mouths to be moving? Body language could speak a lot more than mouth movements.

Overall great work, love the background and the silhouettes and the smooth body movements.

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Thu Mar 29, 2012 9:58 am

kaboom wrote:This looks great and I can tell you worked a lot on it.

My critique is that the mouth movements don't look real. It looks like they are saying "ya ya ya ya ya". Could you slow down the mouth movements? It may look more real that way. Or do you even need the mouths to be moving? Body language could speak a lot more than mouth movements.

Overall great work, love the background and the silhouettes and the smooth body movements.

Thanks.

The mouth movement was something I spent the most time working on since I thought it was important that we could see what they were saying. I wonder if the video isn't playing smoothly. That seems to be an issue with watching video on the web, or on a computer. Sometimes critical frames are dropped. It makes it very difficult to know if I'm doing a good job or not. Sometimes it looks right, other times whole words are dropped.

Getting the motion to look natural is my big concern. I don't want to create a horribly annoying, poorly animated commercial.

Here's a link to download it:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46294039/Park-P ... -pjpeg.mov

I am using Photo JPEG codec for example videos because I read that it seems to play the smoothest on computers, because this compression takes less time to decode. For final delivered renders I use animation codec, because it's lossless and works well with most editing software, but it doesn't play back well in real time at all.

Barry Baker · Post by **Barry Baker** » Thu Mar 29, 2012 4:23 pm

This is looking pretty nice so far. The BG with all its scintillating colours looks great with the silhouettes.
My notes on it would be these:
The lipsync seems to work as far as it goes, at least the characters open and close their mouths in the right places. However, there is no variety of mouth shapes for the different phoneme sounds, and this is giving them a puppet look.
In terms of acting, the girl sits down nicely, with grace, but then she anticipates her boyfriend's proposal by immediately starting to raise her arms. If you let her wait until he has flipped open the little box before she reacts, and with a smaller smile, it will show her surprise when she quickly lifts her hands up to her mouth, smiles widely and says "Oh my god!"
You might also want to have a look at the shape of her torso between her breasts and her hips, there are some odd curves going on there.

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 5:27 am

Thanks for the feedback!

Yeah, maybe she does react prematurely.

I've looked at her body shape quite a bit and wondered if I got it right. These are characters that the client was using in print ads, so I didn't create them. I had to separate the body parts from static clip art though. I may have made a mistake, but I was trying to keep the original shapes. What do you mean by odd? technical, or aesthetic? I know it's not anatomically correct.

Barry Baker wrote:This is looking pretty nice so far. The BG with all its scintillating colours looks great with the silhouettes.
My notes on it would be these:
The lipsync seems to work as far as it goes, at least the characters open and close their mouths in the right places. However, there is no variety of mouth shapes for the different phoneme sounds, and this is giving them a puppet look.
In terms of acting, the girl sits down nicely, with grace, but then she anticipates her boyfriend's proposal by immediately starting to raise her arms. If you let her wait until he has flipped open the little box before she reacts, and with a smaller smile, it will show her surprise when she quickly lifts her hands up to her mouth, smiles widely and says "Oh my god!"
You might also want to have a look at the shape of her torso between her breasts and her hips, there are some odd curves going on there.

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 1:23 pm

This is what happens when you import characters into a scene with animation from a previous scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDK0AAm3eFI

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 1:21 am

Here are two more scenes.

Walking in the park
http://youtu.be/xGBKFAmpZC0

and

Kissing at the movies - head and body turns.
http://youtu.be/eb7jlWrYhNg

I'm going to add some glow halos around them in this one.

Barry Baker · Post by **Barry Baker** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 5:48 pm

SpaceBoy64 wrote:Thanks for the feedback!

I've looked at her body shape quite a bit and wondered if I got it right. These are characters that the client was using in print ads, so I didn't create them. I had to separate the body parts from static clip art though. I may have made a mistake, but I was trying to keep the original shapes. What do you mean by odd? technical, or aesthetic? I know it's not anatomically correct.

Hi Spaceboy. Here's an image to show what I mean:

https://public.blu.livefilestore.com/y1 ... jpg?psid=1

(I tried to embed the image with no success - the forum wouldn't accept either a skydrive or a google docs link. If anyone knows how, I'd love to know)

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 6:02 pm

Okay. I see what you mean. That would be better. I might try to fix that.

Here is the original art that I had to go by. They had it in PDF format, so I used that, but as you can see, the arms occlude the view of her body shape, so I had to make it up somewhat.

SpaceBoy64 · Post by **SpaceBoy64** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 6:05 pm

Barry Baker wrote: (I tried to enbed the image with no success - the forum wouldn't accept either a skydrive or a google docs link. If anyone knows how, I'd love to know)

Try Photobucket.com

Barry Baker · Post by **Barry Baker** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 10:47 pm

Ok, here's a photobucket link:

Hey! It works.

So I can see you took the shape of the girl from the graphic, but that is a very specific, and quite extreme, standing pose, and doesn't tell one how she would look when sitting, for example. I think that your puppet has bending problems - ie. the bones distort the girl's form when you take her away from the original pose. Rigging is an art in itself, and merits a whole job description in 3D animation.

neeters_guy · Post by **neeters_guy** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 11:48 pm

That's a good draw over, Barry Baker.

I would also consider not showing her teeth, to avoid any semblence to the buck-tooth "goofy" look.

It's shaping up nicely.